Thursday, April 22, 2010

After 3 days of being down the Opengovtracker.com site is back up. This is important because this is the site showing that the Space Solar Power Conference was the most popular idea across the government.

In contrast, Musgrave is sharply critical of the International Space Station, which he calls a "$100 billion mistake."

"[The Space Station] does nothing for nobody and it never has," he says. "The cost of space station is 300 Voyager-class satellites. We could have had multiple Voyagers landed or floating in the atmosphere on every planet and on every moon of every planet. That is what we gave up when we went with a jobs program, which is what the space station is. And that's an ungodly sin. And yes, I'm a human space flight person, but listen to me. That's what we could have offered the public."

Base load power is reliable 24 hour a day power. How can solar power be reliable 24 hours a day? Put the collector where the sun always shines, Space.

An idea for a Conference on Space Solar Power was the most popular idea across the entire government on the Open Government Ideascale. It was the most popular idea for NASA, the Department of Energy and for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The reaction has been mainly to ignore it. OSTP saying it is not specific enough. DOE saying nothing about enacting any of the hundreds of ideas proposed by the public. NASA is saying a space solar power conference is infeasible and unpractical. A conference is infeasible and unpractical?
To make it more clear that it is being ignored at the time this is being written opengovtracker.com is down and no longer showing the most popular ideas from Open Government Ideascale. Also the site to comment on the NASA Open Government Plan is not functioning even though they promised it would be up by April 14th. (http://opennasaplan.ideascale.com/)
The idea which these three agencies refuse to act on is "Hold a conference on space solar power which brings together NASA, the Department of Energy, The Department of Commerce, University researchers as well as corporations such as Solaren, PowerSat, Space Energy, Space Island Group, Boeing etc. Also inviting the Japanese, European, Russians and Canadians who are who are working on Space Solar power. The conference would develop ideas on how best to bring this technology to reality. Space solar power offers unlimited, green, base load power. It is now time to turn this futuristic concept into reality with NASA in the lead."

The base load power which a solar power satellite could provide would be clean, green house gas free, easily transferable and exportable power. Space Solar power is also scalable. Space solar power could eventually meet all our electrical need. There are presently a handful of space solar power companies, one of which has a contract to deliver power. None of these companies can succeed without government involvement since at a minimum they need approvals from multiple agencies to launch and operate solar power satellites. The government's refusal even to have a conference on space solar power dooms this new green energy alternative before it can even get off the ground, literally. This shows government is simply not taking green energy seriously.

Please sign this petition and demand government action on Space Solar Power, Now! Demand the government hold a conference on space solar power which includes all relevant agencies.

In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For the last three years, this site has coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation, and now serves as the Foundation's news forum.